Spring TTM 2014 - A Payoff Pitch!

For the first time in two years, the excitement of spring training and another baseball season inspired me to send off some TTM autograph requests to various players & coaches from numerous teams as they all gathered to kick off the 2014 season.

About 33 went out, by my recollection, which isn't too shabby.   I had plans for many more but I am trying to be smarter about my hobby pursuits.   I had to cut costs this year, so I neglected to purchase my usual packs of "Signature Cards".   I considered sending some cards from my collection but I have a dream that one day I will turn some of my autographs into beautifully mounted & framed auto/picture combination pieces.   Cards don't work so well for that but plain index cards do - and plain index cards are cheap!   So, planning was going well.   I was under budget at about $1.05 per request and I was on time.

Here's the catch - I went for the gusto.   Typically, you have to make a strategic decision as a "TTM-er".   Do you want to target younger and lesser-known players with the hopes that they will have smaller fan mail requests to dig through/select from or do you want to target "stars"?

I opted for a mix this spring, with a slight and uncharacteristic bias towards some big names.   Was I throwing money down the drain?   Statistically?   Definitely.   But I'm cursed as an eternal optimist and in a weird way, I love writing those letters to those favorite players.   You see, when I'm putting down my thoughts and praise and best wishes (with a small request at the end!), I imagine every single one coming back.   It's tantalizing and requires a heavy dose of imagination/wishful thinking - but it sure helps to push my weary hand along as I use valuable time towards what might be some very unproductive results.

So the letters went out and time just kept on tickin'.......I timed my mailings to coincide with pitcher & catcher arrivals, my attempt to try and be at the proverbial "head of the TTM line".   This date varied for every team, so I planned accordingly with a staggered approach.

Nothing.

All teams had reported and then full squads began workouts....

Nothing.

The spring games started.

Nothing.

And then SOMETHING.   Yesterday.

A small envelope with my own handwriting scribbled across the front showed up in my mailbox with a postage stamp from Arizona.....an instant smile rolled across my face and I carefully sliced open the envelope, being sure not to bring harm to anything that might be inside.   There was my index card!

BLANK.

I flipped it over in my hands since I had purposely used two-sided blank cards to avoid any line issues.....

BLANK.  

Crap.   But wait!   There was more in the envelope.....a......card?!

Hell yes.   A card.   THIS card, to be exact:

The $30M Man himself, Clayton Kershaw.   Some consider him to be the best pitcher in baseball right now.   I know I do - and he really doesn't have a lot of love in my collection.   A few base cards here and there, but no relics or rookies and certainly no autographs.

Consider that hole plugged.

This card is from that Hobby Ice Age that occurred between my Collecting Periods I and II.   It's a Goudey throw-back, I suppose?   The Kid makes an appearance at the bottom.   Strange, but I don't care.   Kershaw's "22" inscription is a bit difficult to make out on top of the glove.....but again, couldn't care less.

Will any more of my requests from this year find their way back home?   Hey, if they do - bonus.   I couldn't be more content.

Clayton Kershaw was kind enough to send me this card and sign it before he dropped it in the envelope.   Thank you, Mr. Kershaw!   So far, this has been your BEST delivery of the year for me!

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend -

Ryan

My Robertson Collection: 2013 Topps #230 Emerald Parallel

At first, I was annoyed with all of the colored parallels stuffed into today's baseball card packs.   As a base set builder, these parallels merely existed as a wasted card roadblock on my journey towards trying to complete a set.....

Alas, if you can't beat them - JOIN THEM.   And that's what I've decided to do - embrace the rainbow!

Skittles?  
Alas, the parallels make excellent trade bait for my team and player collector trading friends out there.......hey, what do you know - I have a few of those myself!   And here's one of them:

UGH!   Awful photo job there, Ryan.   Let's head to the stock photo pool.....

There we go!

I like this card.   Green doesn't exactly scream YANKEE to me, but it's sharp looking and provides a different design to enjoy and something special to track down.   I'm always up for trading for parallels of my favorite players or teams. 

David is quietly enjoying another solid season for the Yanks as the set-up man for Mo's final tour.   He's 4-1 with 14 holds and 36 K's in 27 2/3 IP.   That's pretty stellar, even though his ERA is a career high 2.93.   I haven't had as many opportunities to watch Robertson toss this year as I would like - hopefully I can watch him strike out the side tonight against the Dodgers!

Did you know Bubba Watson will be throwing out the first pitch?   Heck yes!   Two of my favorites in sports (Yankees and Bubba) collide.....hopefully MLBtv coverage will capture the pre-game moment so that I can catch it live.

Here's the back of the card:

Did anyone ever get a good answer on the fuzzy math Topps used in the "Career Chase" factoids on the backs of these cards?

Just a note - a key statement regarding the evolution of how I collect resides above.   A very brief, innocent mention, but I can't help but feel a little sad that set-building has become such a challenge.   However - as we all know, there's no crying in baseball [card collecting]!

Time to pick myself up, dust myself off and embrace my new world.   Team Collecting and Player Collections.....nothing wrong with that.   But don't think I'm giving up on my vintage set building efforts!

Just wanted to mention it.

Go Yankees and thanks for reading!

Consider Me a Matt Kemp Fan...

.....for life.   As a father, I can't imagine what the young man featured in this video (below) and his family are going through.   I pray I never do, but ultimately that won't be up to me.

Baseball is therapeutic for so many of us.   A retreat from all that ails the world.   A fun game.   A parable for the best parts of life and some of its toughest lessons.

Sometimes we become very critical of the athletes that play baseball or any other sport - and some of this criticism is well deserved.   My biggest problem is when an athlete forgets what the sport they play is all about, how fortunate they truly are and the fans, particularly the young ones, who cheer them on.   Nay, the young fans who idolize them as heroes and role models.

Matt Kemp is having what I might guess to be the toughest season of his exciting career.   Serious injuries plagued Matt during last year and an off season surgery appears to be hampering his typical powerful results at the plate.   His team is struggling as well so this can all make for a very tough time for him as a professional.

But 'tough times' are relative and Kemp's fortune on the ball field can still change in an instant - something that not everyone can say.

And Matt Kemp clearly remembered that this past Sunday night.   And for that, consider me a very big fan.   Bravo, Mr. Kemp.

Thanks for reading.

Here's an article from Yahoo! Sports about the incident:

LOS ANGELES – There was never supposed to be a video. Matt Kemp's uncommon act of kindness was never supposed to go farther than an ailing boy, his dad and the baseball star.
And yet when Kemp awakened Tuesday morning, 36 hours afterward, his phone told him otherwise. The video was everywhere.

No, there was never supposed to be evidence beyond the ailing boy's memory, and perhaps a shelf in his room. Maybe he's wearing Kemp's cap. Maybe he's still holding Kemp's gray road jersey and spikes.

"I didn't know that anybody was filming it," Kemp said Tuesday afternoon. "I wasn't aware."

A boy, Joshua Jones, and his father, Steve Jones, sat Sunday night in front-row seats at AT&T Park in San Francisco. The boy was in a wheelchair. Early in the game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants, the father struck up a conversation with Dodgers third base coach Tim Wallach. He said his son was very sick, that he was a Dodgers fan, and that his favorite player was Kemp. The boy, who has cancer, is unable to speak.

Matt Kemp made an otherwise forgettable trip to San Francisco extraordinary for one Dodger fan. (USA Today Sports) …

"He just kind of looked at me," Kemp said.

Wallach brought them a baseball. Later in the game, he told Kemp about Joshua. And when the game ended – Kemp had made the last out in a loss, the Dodgers' fourth in a row – Wallach returned to the dugout and found Kemp waiting for him. He wanted to go see the boy in the stands.

In the video that was recorded and uploaded by Tommy Schultz, a friend of Joshua,  Kemp and Wallach walk together toward the ailing boy and his father. Kemp reaches out to shake the Joshua's hand, and instead he gets a baseball, which the boy had in his right hand.

Seated below field level, the boy looks with wide eyes as Kemp signs the baseball. The boy beams silently. Kemp returns the ball and then, in a ballpark full only a few minutes before, as onlookers laugh and cheer, Kemp removes his cap and hands it to the boy. He pulls his jersey – No. 27 – over his head and hands that, too, over the rail. And he unties his cleats, pulls off the right and then the left, and gives them to the boy so that his lap is piled with most of Matt Kemp's uniform.   Wallach stands to the side. He watches. Steve had told him his boy was dying.

"As a parent," Wallach said, "you can't even imagine what they're going through. You'd hate to have to imagine what they're going through."

Kemp reaches back over the rail to shake the father's hand. Then the boy's. He smiles and then he is gone, and the boy's eyes follow Kemp as he leaves, cap-less, jersey-less, shoeless.
And that was it. The video went dark. A minute or so that otherwise passed between the father and his ailing boy and the center fielder for the Dodgers, it would last a lifetime. And the world would witness it.

"It's just something I felt probably would have cheered him up a little bit," Kemp said. "Help him out a little bit. I just did it.

Joshua Jones thanked Matt Kemp on Instagram with a message that read "Thanks Matt. I will never forget that moment!!!" …

"Hopefully that made that kid's day."

He paused. Such a small gesture, then it was time to go. There have been others like him. There will be others like him.

"I don't even know the kid's name," Kemp said.



By then, after another loss, in a season in which the talented Kemp is batting but .265 with a single home run and his Dodgers are in last place, Kemp had known there were smaller acts that meant bigger things. In that, a hello and a ball and an autograph weren't enough. The cap wouldn't be enough. The jersey wouldn't be enough. None of it would, perhaps, but it's what he had to give. That and an encouraging smile from an enemy Dodger in the land of Giants.

"I just saw a kid there that was a big fan," Kemp said. "Hopefully, God-willing, a miracle happens and he lives for a while."

Joshua smiled back best he could in a moment that was supposed to vanish, but wouldn't. On Tuesday morning, Kemp's phone was filled with messages.

"What'd I do now?" he thought.

It was the ailing boy, his father, and that minute Sunday night. Just that. All that.

"You have some good stories and some sad stories," Kemp said. "God puts them there to remind you."